Getting in a State!
With Mike Gray.

Mike has been a member of NLP-South for 3 years and admitted that he was often faced with a dilemma when ‘visiting’ speakers asked for a show of hands to determine the level of NLP knowledge in the group. “Beginner? Practitioner? Master Prac? NLP Trainer?” Mike doesn’t fit any of these categories. He’s no beginner, yet his self development training has been NLP associated rather than NLP pure (if there is such a thing!) A brave start in an NLP practice group! However when we remember that NLP is based on what we do naturally its refreshing to have an askance view every now and then to give us greater perspective.
Mike continued his introduction to explain his initial interest in NLP had been sparked by work he was doing on Artificial Intelligence. Particularly the ‘strategies’, ‘sequences’ and ‘representations’ of NLP. He thought they would be useful tools to add to his range, and complement his interest in Maths and linguistics. He was also interested in hypnosis and found himself on a course with Joseph Riggio and John La Valle, and his training has followed on from there with Joseph Riggio.  The perspective Mike was hoping to share with us was all about ‘state’, noticing our own and noticing ‘other’ people’s. Also being more aware of the subtle signals people give us with their body during conversation.

No sooner had we discovered this interesting fact than Mike was preparing us for the next ‘game’ based he told us on Google Image Labeller. A game you can play interactively online apparently. I’ve only just mastered Sudoku online so this was a bit beyond me! However the game is very simple (phew!) and Mike explained it succinctly. From a large box he began to place an array of items around the room. Our mission (if we accepted it) (if you don’t understand this then you haven’t been recently) was to walk around the room giving a name to each item. Preferably not its name. To demonstrate Mike placed the Grand Piano (Coathanger) on a table and followed it with a pink elephant (tennis ball). The game required us to move quite fast and allow just the first thing that came into our head to blurt out. I had to settle for the second thing to begin with as ‘coathanger’ was closely followed by ‘tennis ball’. This only took a minute or two despite having 15 or so items to play with, so were able to really lose ourselves in silliness or seriousness, and afterwards Mike was keen to know how we now felt. Had our state changed? You bet it had! Play this game at home and discover this for yourself.

This took us handily to the break.

There is just so much to talk about and such interesting people to meet that I had to do my sheepdog impression again and also play my ‘music anchor’ to get everyone back on ‘mission’.
Mike was keen to get us discussing “Body Language” and “States” as opposed to thoughts. Its easy to process much of NLP and its allied fields just in our heads and ignore the kinesthetic information from ourselves and others. Whilst we may want to anchor and access positive ‘states’ such as confidence, these tend to be generalised. Mike wanted us to experience mini states that were context related and had particular ‘physical correlates’ for each of us individually. The discussion ranged across the group as we shared our own experiences of this. We can make an instant and incorrect judgment by ‘labeling’ particular movements and then not waiting for more information. E.g. crossed arms by themselves do not mean ‘defensive’.  Indeed ‘interpreting’ other people’s body language is a sure recipe for misunderstanding. Much better to notice the tiny gestures and use them to communicate back with. Before setting off in threes to play with this Mike gave us a demonstration using Jo as his victim, I mean subject! Jo demonstrated perfectly, now we knew what we were looking for. So off in our threes to play. The subject being anything the ‘client’ wanted. Rotating client, practitioner and observer.
This took up the rest of the evening, and Mike’s biggest learning was that he still had another day’s worth of games and exercises to go! Good oh! He can come back and lead us through those next year.
This session followed on so well from Ed’s last month that it could be thought there was someone arranging things around here! In the scant two hours there is never enough time to do more than scratch the surface. I found Mike’s approach gave me some interesting new perspectives and as ever something new to learn. (I need to keep playing the Grand Piano game to loosen up my mind and allow it to free flow better).
Thank you Mike for sharing your ideas and leading us into a right state.

Mike was keen for us to take the following from his session and I have pasted them in here in his own words.
1 - get into a "no such thing as failure" state with no inner dialogue;
2 - allow yourself to pay attention to the signals that your client is giving with their body  as well as their words. They'll show you how they physically want to be. Don't try to "interpret" or "analyse" (aargh) what the signals mean (eg arms folded)! Instead just feed back and amplify (and anchor and future pace) the desirable ones. Assist them to "get" the change they want at the body (=unconscious) level.
3 - allow yourself to pay attention to the signals from your own body and "go there first" into a positive physical state.
Here are some books Mike mentioned.
‘Impro’ by K Johnstone
‘Body & Mature Behaviour’ by Moshe Feldenkrais
‘Battersea Park Road to Enlightenment’ by Isobel Losada.
For more on Joseph Riggio visit www.josephriggio.com
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